Faithfulness
by fringeperson
Summary: Necromongers. They are the name that will convert, or kill, every last living soul. Sometimes, even faced with a horrific death, someone will choose to stand by their faith. Sometimes, watching someone else be that brave will have an impact on those who thought they had given up the fight long ago. Oneshot. Complete. Don't Own.


"It was hard for me too, when I first heard these words. But I changed."

"You betrayed your faith!" called out one man from the gathered crowd.

"Just as you _will_ change," insisted the pale man with the bone-like hat and dressed from neck to toe in shining black leather and glinting metal. "For those of you who will, right now, fall to your knees and ask to be purified."

"We will not betray our faith!" declared the same man who had called out before.

"No one here will do what you ask!" insisted another, and stepped out from the crowd. "It is unthinkable! This is a world of many faiths, many religions, and we simply cannot, and _will_ not, be converted!" he insisted.

"Then I'll take your soul," stated the pale man, all dressed in armour and with a cape flowing behind him, and he struck the man.

Everybody in the crowd was, at the very least, surprised to see that a shadowy figure was pulled out of the man, that it wore his same face. The man who had spoken up against these invaders stared for a moment before he fell.

Dead.

"Join him," the cruel man said as he threw down the soul, and it dissipated into the ground. "Or join me."

It was an ultimatum, and all around the plaza, people began to kneel. Fear for their lives overriding all else.

Two refused.

One, a man, lowered the hood of his cape and looked around through a set of darkly-lensed goggles. He was an imposing figure, bald and clearly muscled under that loose robe, he drew attention to himself as he remained standing without doing anything more than that.

"This is your one chance," a soldier informed him. "Take the Lord Marshall's offer and bow."

"I bow to no man," was the answer in a deep, rumbling voice.

Those few short words seemed to stun everybody.

"He's not a man," the soldier said once he had removed his helmet. "He's the holy half-dead who has seen the Underverse, and returned with powers you can't imagine."

"Look, I'm not with everyone here," the man said. "But I _will_ take a piece of _him_," he added, and pointed to a large soldier with two great weapons, one in each hand.

"A piece you will have," the soldier agreed.

The fight was fast, and ended in the death of the soldier, rather than the man.

"Stop him!" the Lord Marshall ordered when the man turned to leave.

The other, a woman, had passed unnoticed until that moment, though she had remained standing also. It was not until she opened her own mouth that any gave her heed, but she did not speak, no, she sang. She sang a hymn of her faith, a hymn that had been written long before the human race had ever left Earth for the planets beyond that solar system.

"In Christ alone, my hope is found. He is my light, my strength, my song. This cornerstone, this solid ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm. What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when strivings cease. My comforter, my all in all. Here in the love of Christ, _I stand_," she sang out. Her voice had started softly, though in the stunned silence of the place that had suddenly become an arena, it echoed across them all.

Slowly, the woman walked down from where she had been standing at the back of the kneeling crowd. Slowly, her soft voice became louder, bolder, and impassioned.

She stood in the centre of them all, where moments before the Lord Marshall had stood, commanding their attention. Where his priest still stood, though he had backed down and stared up at her, something like awe in his gaze.

"No guilt in life, no fear in death," the woman sang, her blue eyes blazing across at them all, as though she damned them all for being so weak in their faiths. "This is the power of Christ in me. From life's first cry, to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny. No power of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from his hand," she insisted as the Lord Marshall frowned at her and started to stalk away from the man and back down to her, "'til he returns, or calls me home, here in the power of Christ, _I'll stand_!" the woman crescendoed, her voice strong and resolved, her eyes showing not a hint of fear as the Lord Marshall, in all his armour, slowly stalked back down to her.

She'd skipped a couple of verses, but these two that she had sung were the important ones just now, and she had everybody's attention.

Even the man who, moments before, had taken the knife from the back of the soldier and rammed it through armour and into his heart.

A knife that was quickly and suddenly claimed by the priest, and slammed into the throat of the Lord Marshall.

"Purifier!" yelled one of the soldiers, shocked.

"We all began as something else," the man, priest, Purifier, said softly, his words barely a whispered echo of what he had told them all only a short while before. He glanced back at the woman that had stepped out so boldly, defied the Lord Marshall even after his threats – something no one had done before her.

Oh, the man moments before had been dismissive, but he hadn't defied the Lord Marshall on the grounds of his faith. He'd simply been there because he wanted to kill a particular one of their soldiers. That was different.

This was a woman, a soft-bodied woman who had almost certainly never raised her hand against another person in her life, marching down to face her death because she would _rather die_ than accept that she _must_ renounce her faith.

And, as such conviction often does, it had a profound affect on those around her.

"Thank you," the Purifier said to her softly, and removed the knife from the Lord Marshall's throat. The swift pull dislodged the man's head from his shoulders completely.

The invaders, these people who called themselves Necromongers, fully aware that Purifier had killed the Lord Marshall, knelt before him. It was a code of their faith: you keep what you kill.

"Lady," said the man who had so quickly killed one of the invaders, "you got moxy."

"And you have blood on your hands," the woman answered calmly as she looked him up and down shortly. There was no judgement in her tone, she spoke those words as though she was commenting on the weather.

"Madam," the Purifier spoke up. "May I ask... Why, knowing the Lord Marshall would kill you, did you still...?"

The woman smiled gently. "Because we are all as the flowers of the field, and shall wither and die. Why would I cling to this fading life so desperately that I would surrender eternity?" she asked, and though it was a rhetorical question, she still received an answer.

"Because that's what people do," said the man who had killed one of the soldiers. "Morals mean shit when it's your ass on the line."

The woman gave the man a Look, one that searched his face and seemed to see through those black goggles he wore.

"I didn't do what I did because it was the _moral_ thing," she stated plainly. "I did it because _my faith_ called me to sing those words. I did it because my heart would not be silent. I did it," she called across the whole, silent gathering, eyes flashing with damnation for all of their weaknesses, "because if I did not do it, then I would have condemned myself to death."

"You didn't even know if you'd live to see the end of the day when you came walkin' down those steps," the man insisted.

"No," the woman agreed. "But to deny my faith would have condemned me more surely than guns, or knives, or poison, or anything else."

"If you please," the Purifier said, his tone firm though his voice was soft, "I would like to speak with both of you privately."

"I just want to get the fuck off this rock," the man answered, even as the woman inclined her head in acquiescence. "Too damn bright for my taste. 'Sides, there's someone I gotta find."

"I'll give you a ship," the Purifier hastened, "but please."

"Alright," the man agreed lowly.

~The End~


End file.
